Majoring in Technology

Building your own App Store Wish List

Wouldn’t it be great if you could save apps you find at the App Store into a wish list?

Maybe you’d prefer to read reviews online first before deciding to download the app. That’s fair enough, but how to keep track of those apps?

Gotta check this app out...

One solution you might find is to use a dedicated app. Take AppShopper for instance.

It’s essentially a remodeled App Store with some extra bells and whistles like a price checker, and of course, a wish list.

But it’s a hassle launching a separate app just to save something to your wish list every time you find something interesting via the App Store. Ideally speaking, there should be some sort of “Add to wish list” button on every app’s product page.

As of this moment, that does not exist. In fact, the only place to find it is on iTunes, when you’re using your computer.

Working with what you have

At the bottom of every app’s product page, is a button to “tell a friend,” which is essentially an “email this” link.

What I currently do is email myself the links to these apps and use a Gmail filter to archive and tag these emails. Thus, I have my own dedicated “wish list” of sorts that I can easily access in my Gmail.

Here is a detailed walkthrough:

Click the “Tell a Friend” link at the bottom of the app’s description.

In the email draft, enter your primary Gmail address.

Open up Gmail. In the search box, click the down arrow on the right to bring out the pull-down menu and enter the following filter:

In the From field, enter the email address you used earlier.

In the Has the words field, enter “Check out this application on the App Store:”

Click “Create a filter with this search“

Here you select the actions to take when an email arrives in your inbox. The preference is yours, but I chose to skip the inbox(archive it) and apply the appropriate label (ie, Wish List).

If available, check the option to “apply the filter to X matching conversations.”

Send yourself a test email to check that the filter catches it correctly

Thus, using a Gmail filter, we can build ourselves a makeshift wish list for apps you find at the App Store. Rather than get lost in the quick sand that is your inbox, the emails are filtered into its own folder where you can quickly access it in the future.

Some minor caveats

The Mac App Store does not offer a native wish list option

This method only works so long as the phrase “Check out this application on the App Store:” is used inside the auto-generated email when you select the “Tell a Friend” link. Of course, one way to future-proof this technique would be to add a hashtag in your subject line (like #appstorewishlist) and create the appropriate filter in your Gmail.

The only reason I chose to not use that method is because it requires you to manually edit the email before you send it to yourself. The tradeoff is of course speed but there is some risk if the message body is revised in the future.

Currently, the Mac App Store does not have any “add to wish list” option like iTunes. You could use the same technique outlined earlier, but you would need to create a separate filter that checks for the phrase “has recommended that you check out” in the message body.